The Internet

1. The internet, transfers power from suppliers to customers, especially in consumer markets. In the travel industry, travelers can now easily check for alternatives and make their own bookings. Electronic distribution is changing relationships and roles between suppliers, intermediaries, and customer as traditional intermediaries are being replaced by innovative newcomers such as Expedia and Priceline. The internet also helps to create additional outsourcing opportunities. Many professors now outsource their grading to companies like EduMetry Inc. The graders there are trained to provide good-quality grading and feedback that are very beneficial to helping students to improve on their weaknesses.

2. A company will often say that its people are its greatest asset; but when it comes to Marketing, that may not be true. Data is arguably Marketing’s greatest asset. The quality of a Marketing campaign depends entirely on the quality of the data that it leverages about existing and prospective customers. ‘Database marketing’ is the term used for the marketing techniques that are aimed at leveraging data to deliver more highly personalized, relevant campaigns. The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) sponsors an annual conference called The National Center for Database Marketing focused on just this topic.

Database marketing emphasizes the use of statistical techniques to develop models of customer behavior, which are then used to select customers for communications. As a consequence, database marketers also tend to be heavy users of data warehouses, because having a greater amount of quality data about customers increases the likelihood that a more accurate model can be built.